Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre is the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, a city in southern Brazil on the east bank of Lake Guaíba. Its name means happy port. Chimarrão, the bitter mate tea of the gaúchos, is drunk from a gourd through a metal straw in its parks and streets.

Couples from the Azores settled the site in 1752, and the place was first known as Porto dos Casais, the port of the couples. In 1773 it became the seat of the captaincy of Rio Grande de São Pedro. German immigrants arrived in the valleys to the north from the 1820s, and Italians followed later in the century, shaping the food and the buildings of the region. In the late 1980s the city began its participatory budget, letting citizens vote on part of the public spending, and in the early 2000s it hosted the first World Social Forum.

Gerdau, founded in Porto Alegre, makes long steel products such as rebar and wire rod in the Americas. Grupo RBS, based in the city, publishes the newspaper Zero Hora and runs radio and TV stations in the south of Brazil. The port of Porto Alegre, on the Guaíba, ships grain and goods through the Lagoa dos Patos to the sea.

The Mercado Público, opened in the 19th century, sells meat, fish, herbs and erva-mate in a yellow building in the center. The Iberê Camargo Foundation, designed by Álvaro Siza, shows the works of the painter Iberê Camargo in a white concrete building on the lake shore. Grêmio and Internacional, the two football clubs of the city, have both won the Copa Libertadores, and their matches against each other are known as the Gre-Nal.